A Simple Melody
by Invisiblegirl3
Summary: Disclaimer: Yeah, so I m still no J.K. Rowling, much to my discontent. Melody doesn't believe in love. It's highly illogical, and just gets you hurt in the end. But Melody is the type of person who typically enjoys highly illogical and dangerous things, and as she and her friends know well, things are better when they don't go as planned. Pre Black Files and Cliched Challenge.


Melody knew a lot of things.

No, she wasn`t the type of girl who scored perfect marks on every exam, like her friend Lily. She didn`t frequently pull all-nighters in the library just to study, like her other friend Remus. Melody didn`t claim to be and clearly wasn`t the expert of all things Quidditch, like her friend James, or the 'Voluptuously-haired expert of love', as her friend Sirius declared to be on more than one occasion when he correctly predicted the outcome of a relationship.

In fact, at the beginning of the summer of her sixteenth birthday, Melody didn`t even believe in true love.

She`d watched her friends fall in and out of relationships, and had dated a few boys herself, but Melody had never seen the compatibility that fit under the description of "true love".

Her best friends Mary and Mattie always told her that she just hadn`t lived long enough yet to be able to say true love didn`t exist. Mattie pointed out that Melody probably didn`t thing love existed just because her parents were divorced.

But Melody knew a lot of things. Melody knew James dated every girl at school except the one her really had feelings for, and she knew Alice had though she was in love with her last boyfriend right up until he dumped her in front of the whole table at dinner. She knew that even though Mary was the sensible, reasonable one, Mary would never admit true love wasn`t real because she was still intent on finding it. Melody knew that all relationships end in death, divorce, or break-up and that therefore they just weren't worth the trouble.

Friendships, however, were different. Melody knew that Mattie and Mary, her two best friends in the while world, were most definitely worth the trouble. In fact, trouble was what they did best.

"Can you believe they escorted us from the tent?!" Mattie said, brushing off her shirt and glaring angrily over at her shoulder towards the blurry beach workmen goons standing guard at the fortune teller`s tent.

"To be fair, you two did accuse her of being a drug dealer and set all of her birds free."

"First of all, when you go to get your fortune told, there isn`t supposed to be blatant animal abuse!" Melody cried, outraged. "She forced those poor chickens to peck at the ground and preform for a cheap trick! She just keeps them in a tiny dark cage and probably doesn`t even feed them properly."

"Mmhmm, keep walking before she changes her mind about letting us go and makes us pay for those chickens."

Melody continued her speech as if Mary hadn`t spoken. "But now they are free, free as the wind! Free to soar, to travel anywhere their chicken heart's desire! One day they shall tell ballads to their chicks of their travels, and when they do they will speak of the ones who freed them, the great and powerful Mary, Mattie, and Mel! They will name chicks after us for generations to come, and pass down the stories long after we have died, but we shall live on, immortalized in the squawks and praises of all the future chickens! We shall be their gods, the patron saints of the chickens; fighting for their feathery rights till death do us part!" Melody spread her arms wide, depicting the magnitude of the endeavor.

"The poor chickens are slaves to that hag no more!" Mattie joined in, throwing her fist in the air.

Mary looked over to the chickens, which were seemingly unaware of their epic destiny. "Um, I hate to rain on your emperor-of-the-chickens parade…"

"GOD of the chickens."

"Yeah, that. Anyway, the chickens aren`t really traveling very far, they`re just sitting on that sand dune."

"Oh, don`t you worry. They`re just bidding their time, waiting to take off into the wild blue yonder."

Mattie looked up at the rides around them. "Speaking of wild blue yonder, do you guys want to go on the ferris wheel next?"

"I thought you`d never ask!" Mary rejoiced.

Mattie turned to her uneasy best friend and gently asked again. "Mel? Do you wanna go up?"

Mel was sure Mattie was remembering the mandatory Quidditch lessons they`d had to take in first year. In the very first lesson, when the instructor had told them to make the brooms rise up to their hands, Melody`s broom had shot up and hit her in the head, giving her a bloody nose. Then, in the lesson when you actually had to get _on_ the broom….

When Mattie put her hand gently on Melody`s shoulder, Melody was positive her best friends was thinking of the day they`d become best friends.

It hadn`t been on the train to Hogwarts.

They were not quite friends when they chose beds next to each other in the dorm.

But they were already best friends the day they both revived their first detention (a momentous occasion indeed).

No, the first day Matilda Bell became Melody`s best friend was the day she found Melody crying her eyes out by herself in the bathroom.

* * *

Melody couldn`t help but be relieved for the nosebleed the broom gave her, because it meant she got to leave the first flying lesson early.

The day of the second lesson, Melody _had _intended on going to class, but when she was at the door to the pitch she felt ill, so she quickly ran to the bathroom.

When she got there, she felt slightly better, but couldn`t bring herself to go to the pitch. Her stomach _did_ feel quite jittery still….

So it was that fifteen minutes into the lesson, Melody was still sitting on the bathroom floor by the sinks.

At this point, Melody was rooted to the floor at the thought of getting on that broom.

She had to be the world worst Gryffindor. It had barley been a week, and here she was, too terrified to even go to class just because of her irrational fear of flying.

The heights, she knew, wasn`t the problem. The fact that she`d be fifty feet in the air with only a twig that rocketed threw the air was, though.

So much for brave, Melody though. She figured it wasn`t worth holding in her tears any longer, since she was a failure anyway, so she allowed the drops to slip freely down her face. She`d better tell Dumbledore that the Sorting Hat had made a mistake. Would she be able to get resorted at this point, or was it too late and she would just get expelled or something?

"Are you alright?"

Great, Melody supposed. There goes her dignity as well.

When she managed to wipe away enough tears to see clearly, Melody recognized one of the black-haired girls from her dorm, either Alice or Matilda, standing by one of the stalls. The girl`s black hair was in a disarray, obviously from being battered by the wind outside.

"Melody, right? How come you`re not at the flying lesson? It`s brilliant, you`ll love it."

Matilda. That`s right, the girl`s name was Matilda.

"I don`t want…" Melody`s voice broke into an involuntary sob. Matilda sat down next to her on the disgustingly grimy tile floor.

"What`s wrong?"

"I don`t want to fly." Melody chocked out.

"Why not? It`s great fun, the best part of being magical if you ask me."

Melody was quiet.

"You`re not muggle born, right? You`re familiar with Quidditch?"

"I love Quidditch. My mum and dad and I used to watch it as a family all the time, and went to three world cups in a row. We haven`t gone all together since they split up, but I still follow all the matches."

"Do you want to play Quidditch?"

"Yeah, but I could never get near a broom. I really, really, really don`t want to fly."

Matilda thought for a moment.

"I have three older brothers, Quince, Johnny, and Ryan. When I was little and they got their Hogwarts letters, my family would all go to Diagon Alley together. Every year my brothers would go by floo, and I would always beg my dad to let me side-along apparate with her so I didn`t have to travel by floo. The whole stepping-into-a-fire freaked me out. He always let me apparate with him, but every year he`d say 'You can floo when you`re ready, Mats.'. On Quince`s seventh, Johnny`s sixth, and Ryan`s fourth year of Hogwarts, I finally flooed to Diagon Alley, and I loved it. So you see, you might not want to fly now, but that doesn`t mean you`ll never be able to get on a broom."

Melody rubbed her eyes.

"Gryffindors can be afraid too, everyone's afraid of something. That`s what makes us human. When you`re ready, I can give you flying lessons, if you want."

"I`d like that." Melody smiled. "Promise you won`t tell anyone about this?"

"I promise. I`ll take it to my grave." Matilda said, grinning.

Melody had no way of knowing at the time, but this would be the first of hundreds of secrets the girls would share.

"Matilda?"

"Mattie. You can call me Mattie."

"Okay, Mattie. What are you afraid of?"

Mattie cupped her hands and whispered her deepest fear into her new friend`s ear.

"Now don`t tell anyone." Mattie said at a normal volume.

"I`ll take it to my grave."

"Good. Hey, are you hungry?"

"A little. Why?"

"Well, before I left for Hogwarts, my brother Johnny told me how to get to the kitchens…"

* * *

"I`ll meet you guys over by the cotton candy stand when you`re done, alright?" Melody called.

"Okay! Don`t have too much fun without us!" Mary replied as she and Mattie headed off for the ferris wheel.

Melody checked over her shoulder to see how the chickens were fairing with their newfound freedom. Her feathered friends were eating some popcorn from a bag somebody on the boardwalk had crudely chucked into the sand.

"Nobody here but us chickens." She muttered to herself, sliding on her sunglasses and continuing down the boardwalk.

The half of the summer she spent out of England at her mother`s summer house was always better when her friends where there. It wasn`t that Melody didn't like her mother and her mother`s new boyfriend. Melody just missed the people who knew her best, the ones she could be herself around. Her parents might be more genetically related than the Gryffindors at Hogwarts, but Melody knew who her real family was.

Suddenly, Melody smelled something that made her forget almost entirely why she was alone in a foreign country on that hot summer day. It was smoke, and not the yummy good-food-on-the-grill smoke.

The crowd thickened around her as she walked closer and closer to the source of the smoke. Pushing her way through the crowd, she saw that one of the potted shrubs that lined the boardwalk had caught on fire. Several attendants were pouring water on the flames, but if anything they seemed to be making the blaze brighter and higher. The arcs of light looked like no fire Melody had ever seen before. She could have sworn that the flames had formed some sort of dragon at the peak of the fire.

"Everyone, please remain calm and stand back! The fire department is on its way!" shouted a man wearing a large straw hat (which was dangerously close to the flames) who was waving back the crowd. A woman screamed, and he was ignored from then on as chaos erupted.

The mass of vacationers, naturally, panicked and stampeded away from the fire like crazed elephants. Melody, who had been standing on her toes to get a better look of the scene, was trampled and pushed against the railing at the edge of the boardwalk. Her head slammed against the metal bars of the railing, and someone`s disregarded beach bag was kicked into her side.

Everything was a blur to Melody, a dizzying mash of colors and sounds. She clung tight to the bag, making sure people didn`t kick it off the boardwalk and onto the beach below in the madness. For several terrifying moments, the bag and bar were the only constants keeping her in place.

Suddenly, the violent torrent of feet slowed and Melody began to get her bearings again.

Somebody hadn`t managed to put the fire out yet, apparently. Straw Hat Man and several other of what Melody could only assume were vendors and attendants were gathered around the burning plant, wildly gesturing and yelling at each other.

"I didn`t do anything!"

"…must have been an idiot`s cigarette butt that lit it…"

"SOMEBODY GET ANOTHER BUCKET!"

"I oughta …"

"THE WATER`S NOT WORKING!"

She realized she was still tightly clutching the bag. Using the railing to help herself up, Melody peered around for the owner.

She walked up to Straw Hat Man. "Excuse me? Is this your bag? Sir?"

"Step aside, the boardwalk staff has this under control! Please continue away from the fire!" He shouted at her.

"It sure doesn`t look like you`ve got it under control." Melody mumbled to herself.

Across the mob, she saw a tall boy around her age with very short brown hair leaning over the booths and looking around for something. Nobody seemed to be paying any attention to him, because everyone was busy dealing with the fire.

"Excuse me," Melody called to the boy. "Are you looking for this?"

The boy turned, and his face instantly lit up, his smile warm and full of pure delight and surprise, like they were old friends that had happened to bump into each other on the street. Mel was startled by his reaction, every inch of her freezing as their eyes met.

"Oh, thanks, I thought I`d lost this." He managed to get the bag free from Melody`s frozen grip. "Well, see you around."

With that, the boy turned and left, walking calmly away.

Melody stared back at the booth the boy had been looking through, and something caught her eye.

A metal cash box.

An _open_ metal cash box.

An _empty _metal cash box.

He had robbed the stalls, and she`d just given him the perfect excuse to have been over there.

Melody spun around and started after the boy, vaguely noticing out of the corner of her eye that the fire had gone out.

Hurrying to catch up with the boy, Melody failed to notice that Straw Hat Man had seen her looking at the empty cash box. At least, she failed to notice until she had caught up to the boy, just as Straw Hat Man pointed at her and the boy and shouted, "Thieves! I`ve been robbed!"

The boy instantly broke out into a sprint, leaving Melody no choice but to dash after him, praying that the goons from the fortune teller`s hut wouldn`t pop out and catch them.

The pair raced down the boardwalk, dodging families and hot dog carts, not daring to look back. Melody followed the boy around corners and behind booths, never less than five feet behind him. Finally, the boy ran over to the edge of the boardwalk, hopped the railing, and disappeared from sight.

Melody stopped short of the railing. Peering over, she could see the dent in the sand from where the boy had landed. It was about a ten foot drop. The sand seemed soft enough, and the boy had, by the looks of it, made it without breaking anything….

She leapt over the railing, her bright red hair swirling around her in that one moment of weightlessness, and she felt totally free. No wonder Mattie loved flying so much.

But, since Melody wasn`t in fact flying, she plummeted into the sand, landing with a not-so-graceful "Ooph."

"Don`t move." The boy`s voice came from behind her, and there was more of an edge to it than there had been earlier.

Naturally, Melody didn`t listen. She stood up and started to turn around when someone grabbed her and pinned her face first into one of the support posts.

"I said, don`t move."

Melody had her wand in her back pocket of her shorts, but the boy had her hands held at painful angles against her back, which (luckily for him) made it impossible to curse him into oblivion.

"Did you start the fire?"

"What do you think?" He whispered in her ear, pressing her against the post more so anyone looking down from the boardwalk wouldn`t see them. "Shhh."

There were loud, fast paced footsteps over our heads, and some undistinguishable yelling. For several terrible seconds, Melody waited for the thump of the Straw Hat Man hitting the sand next to them, but no such noise came. Instead, loud footsteps quickly clambered off, away from where the pair had jumped.

"Okay, I`m going to let go of your hands, but if you try anything, I will not hesitate to pin you down in the sand."

Melody felt the strong hands slip off her wrists and the pressure on her back loosen. In a flash, she whipped out her wand and spun to face the boy, pointing her wand at his heart.

She smiled at the sight of the shock in his dark brown eyes, but her smile quickly melted as Melody saw that he too had a wand pointed at her.

"You`re...?" The duo said simultaneously. The boy beamed like he had earlier, pleasantly and genuinely surprised. Melody couldn`t close her mouth.

Melody recovered first. "Wait, then why were you robbing a game stall?"

He shrugged, and she could tell he was trying to suppress a sly grin. "I was bored, and I wanted to see if I could get away with it."

"That isn`t really your bag, is it?"

He raised an eyebrow in response. "What`s a girl like you doing in a place like this?"

"What do you mean, at the beach? I`m here for the same reason you`re here, probably. Vacation."

"No, I mean assisting in a robbery."

"I was just trying to find out whose bag that was! Besides, you`re giving the money back."

"Really? Are you gonna make me?" He laughed, despite the fact that he had a wand pointed straight for his heart.

"You really don`t wanna challenge me. I`m the second best dueler in my year." Melody lied.

"Oh, I`m sure you are. Where do you go to school? I know I haven`t seen you around where I go."

"I`m from Hogwarts, thank you very much. You?"

"I should`ve known. Hogwarts tends to have certain spunk."

"Spunk?"

"As in, you`re spunkier than a Beauxbatons student, who would have started crying when we were being chased by the game stall guy."

"Thanks, I guess. And where do you go, Mr. I-rob-things-for-fun?"

The boy looked away. "Durmstrang."

"Oh, so that`s why you think you`re all tough."

He looked up and smirked. "Think? I am tough. Tough as nails!" He picked up a piece of driftwood and snapped it in half.

"Ooh, so tough, you can snap rotted wood, I`m sooo impressed."

"As you should be." He said proudly, ignoring my sarcasm.

"What`s your name, tough guy?"

"Rusty."

"Rusty? As in rusty nails?" Melody smiled. She realized that through the conversation, they`d both gradually lowered their wands.

"No, as in tough as nails, remember?" Melody couldn`t help but giggle a bit, and she caught a smile flicker across his face as well. "What`s your name?"

"Oh, if you though yours was bad…mine`s just a random word."

"Rusty`s a random adjective."

"Fine, it`s Melody." She studied her flip-flops and waited for his reaction.

"That`s a lovely name! Music! Do you sing?"

"Psh, are you serious?" She laughed hysterically. "No, I suppose you`re not Sirius…"

"What?"

"Nothing." Melody looked around at the deserted rubble that lay below the boardwalk. "So do you think it`s safe to go back up?"

"Yeah, they`ve probably given up on us by now. Hey! Where are you going?"

"_We _are going back up there so _you_ can secretly give back the money you stole and _I_ can find my friends, who must be worried about me."

"First of all, what makes you think I`m giving the money back?"

Melody rolled her eyes. "Oh, you`re going to give it back. Come on."

"You barely know me, Melody. Do you know what they teach at Durmstrang?" He asked, and Melody noticed something dark beneath the surface of his eyes that she hadn`t seen before.

"Magic?"

"Well, yeah. But they don`t just teach charms and jinxes and potions. Do you know who Gellert Grindelwald is?"

Melody`s eyes widened. "Of course I do."

"He went to Durmstrang, Mel. They teach dark magic there. Do you know what fiend fire is?"

"No, but if I had to guess then I`d say it was what the fire was from before."

"Fiend fire can`t be put out with water. It`s really dark magic, and yeah, I used it earlier on that plant."

"Aren't you afraid you`ll get caught doing underage magic?"

"You really don`t get this, do you?" Rusty brushed his hand through his hair and closed his eyes. "I`m bad, Mel. I`ve already got the beach cops on us for robbing a booth, and I think we both know I could kill you with a flick of my wand and have absolutely no regrets."

"Somehow, I don`t buy that." Melody raised an eyebrow, and put her wand in her pocket. "If that was true, then why don`t you just kill me now?"

Rusty shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment. Melody could tell he was definitely thinking about killing her right there. She knew it was a very risky gamble, but Mel knew that she could prove that there was some good in this dark boy.

Finally, after a few minutes of scary silence, Rusty lowered his wand.

Melody beamed. "I knew it!"

"Don`t get too excited. I`m only doing this because witnesses saw you running with me earlier and if your body is found under here they`ll go after me."

"Mmhmm." Melody walked over and grabbed his arm. "Let`s go return that money now."

"Are you crazy? They`ll recognize us for sure, especially you." He lightly held up the ends of Melody`s long red hair for example.

Mel put her hands on her hips. "Then what are we supposed to do?"

Rusty smiled slyly and started digging through the bag.

"So that was yours!" Melody grinned.

He pulled out a baseball cap and tossed it to Mel. "Never said it wasn`t."

Rusty changed sweatshirts, giving his old one to Melody to cover up her brightly colored shirt. She put on his hat and tucked her hair back.

"You ready?" He asked as she adjusted the hat.

"I am in fact ready." Mel replied. She followed Rusty past the shrapnel and debris that resided under the boardwalk, wondering who would leave a perfectly good plastic shark down there. Getting back up was a lot harder than going down, and only after several minutes of wondering did they finally find a staircase.

Luckily, it appeared the boardwalk cops had given up looking for them, but they decided it would be best to leave the disguises on until after they`d returned the money and cleared their names, just in case.

"So you`re here with friends?" Rusty said, breaking the lull in conversation.

"Well actually, my friends are here visiting me for a few days while I`m visiting my mum for the majority of weeks in the foreseeable future. What brings you here?"

"I`m staying with my aunt and uncle over the summer." Rusty explained. "Hey since when did the beach have chickens?"

Melody couldn`t contain a laugh when she followed his gaze. "Not since this morning."

"Let me guess- you transfigured some annoying friends or siblings of yours?"

"Nope. Not even close. I`m an only child anyway."

"Then where did they come from?"

"See, my friend Mary insisted we see a fortune teller earlier-who by the way was totally a muggle and completely not a seer- and the lady had these poor chickens locked up in a small, grungy cage. So while Mary was getting her palm read, my other friend Mattie and I liberated the poor feathered creatures, and now we are their gods."

Rusty cracked up into a large smile. "Really? So they will do your bidding?"

"They would, but if we ordered them around that would go against the whole point of liberation."

"True," He nodded. "How very noble."

"Thanks." Melody brushed back a stray bit of hair. "Now it`s your turn to be noble." She pointed over at the booth where Straw Hat Man stood, glowering into the crowd as if everyone was out to get him.

He sighed. "Alright, but I`ll need your help to distract him."

* * *

In the small alley between the booths, Melody gave Rusty back his sweatshirt and hat. She fixed her hair back to how it had been when the Straw Hat Man had seen her, so he wouldn`t doubt for an instant that she was the girl who`d apparently robbed his stall.

As she prepared herself, she turned back one last time to Rusty. "See you around?"

"Are you sure you want to see me around? In the time you`ve known me, you`ve almost gotten arrested for stealing, jumped off a ten-foot pier, been less than ten feet away from fiend fire, and had me threaten to kill you."

Melody wanted to say that it had been worth it to meet him, and that she`d had fun, but her brain vetoed the words. Love didn`t exist. She`d seen too many people make that mistake and end up miserable. It was just adrenaline from all the running and jumping, she told herself. Out of the moment, Melody was sure she would feel differently. Rusty was just like anyone else, right?

So, Melody shrugged, and tried (but failed) to hide her small smile.

"Wait," Rusty said, before Melody could walk away. "What`s your last name?"

"Williamson. Melody Williamson." Melody said, and walked off into the crowd without another word.

* * *

The plan worked perfectly. As soon as she passed Straw Hat Man`s booth, he took off after her, shouting, "Get her! That`s the girl who robbed my stall!"

Melody sprinted down the boardwalk, easily out pacing Straw Hat Man but slowing just enough to keep him chasing her.

Eventually, over by the ring toss booth, she decided she`d given Rusty enough of a window to slip the money back and sped up, completely loosing Straw Hat Man.

After bolting between booths and doubling back a few times just to make sure she wasn`t still being followed, Melody headed to the cotton candy stand, where Mattie and Mary were waiting.

"Hey, did you do anything awesome without us?" Mary joked, not expecting the answer she got.

"Actually…" Melody smiled sheepishly.

Mattie`s eyes lit up, and she looped her left arm through Melody`s right. "Do tell."

"Yes, yes, do tell." Mary echoed, looping her right arm through Melody`s left.

"What if I`m not at the liberty to say?" Melody kidded.

Mattie pretended to ponder this for a moment while steering them through the crowd. "Well, then I`d have to say we get ourselves some bribery ice cream and you, Mel, will fill us in on all the details.

As the magical trio made their way to the delicious frozen creamy goodness, Melody could have sworn she saw a familiar black bag resting on one of the benches.

Melody knew a lot of things, and she wasn`t always right, but as her friends pulled her closer to the yummy heaven that is ice cream, she knew, and was entirely correct in thinking that she hadn`t seen the last of that Durmstrang boy.


End file.
